By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
Just weeks after the MLB officially accepted Negro League stats, Topps and Fanatic Collectibles have signed a multi-year deal with the estate of star player Josh Gibson.
As well, Topps will include Gibson in the Topps MLB at Rickwood Field series this month, ensuring the legacy of Josh Gibson will continue to be told in the form of collectible trading cards.
Topps has been making cards with Gibson since 2001. Since 2015, the company has made 31 cards, including this year’s releases in the 2024 Allen and Ginter set and the 2024 Tribute Base Cards, among others.
“I think given the momentum of the Rickwood game, as well as the Negro Leagues properly and finally being included in MLB record books, it only made sense to extend our relationship with Josh Gibson and the family,” said Omar Wilkes, head of athlete partnerships at Fanatics Collectibles. “I think it’s our duty to use our platform and our history of having a world-class trading card product connected with baseball to amplify and kind of keep his legacy going on forever.”
As recently covered in The Licensing Letter, Gibson is among the thousands of players whose records and stats are now included among the official statistics of Major League Baseball. Prior to June this year, those stats were not included, because black players had been segregated and prevented from playing in the MLB. This year, however, the MLB fulfilled its promise to recognize the achievements of black players, including Josh Gibson, who now holds several records, including the all-time batting record.
Yet even with the new contract and the newfound attention and praise, the Gibson family never needed MLB’s sign of approval or validation that Gibson’s accolades mattered.
“We always considered our Negro League family members major leaguers anyways,” said great-grandson Sean Gibson, who heads the Gibson estate. “It’s just that Major League Baseball didn’t recognize them as major leaguers.”
Terms of the deal with Topps were not disclosed, but licensing lawyer Edward Schauder of the law firm Neason Yeager, which represents the estate, said the price tag for a Josh Gibson licensing deal has certainly gone up since the player’s stats were officially recognized by the MLB.
Feature: Time for Licensing To Hit a Home Run With Baseball Legend Josh Gibson
Gibson is now known officially as baseball’s all-time batting leader, with his career .372 average beating out Ty Cobb’s lifetime average of .367.
“Josh Gibson would have hit home runs in any league, in any era, had he been given the opportunity to do so,” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick said earlier this year in a video produced in conjunction with MLB.
Gibson also holds the all-time record for the highest batting average for a single season, with his .466 record in 1943 playing for the Homestead Grays, beating out Hugh Duffy’s .440 average in 1894. He similarly beat out Barry Bonds to become the single season leader in home run hitting, and incredibly, he also now holds the record for career home run percentage over the legendary Babe Ruth.
Gibson, along with other descendants of Negro Leagues players, created the Negro League Family Alliance. The group’s mission is “to collectively preserve the legacies, history and intellectual properties of the Negro Leagues,” according to their website.
Gibson will be representing his family’s estate during MLB’s Rickwood Field game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday. As part of the deal with Topps, an 18 x 24, 8,000-pound card of Gibson from the pre-Rickwood game tour will be given to the Josh Gibson Foundation, which Sean Gibson says will be displayed in the city where his great-grandfather played for most of his career.
“We definitely wanna have that card in Pittsburgh,” he said. “But I feel like right now, with the way Josh is being talked about through the MLB record books, that card has to be in Pittsburgh for some point, for some period of time.”
The estate is currently looking at a variety of other licensing opportunities. Gibson told TLL in June that he is keen to work on a film or series that would tell the story not just of Josh Gibson, but of the Negro League in general.